Faith

And again you won't provide us with support for why it is "poor" other than the obvious fact that you really, really like what you consider to be "objectivity."

InfraBlue wrote:

My reply wasn't snarky. It was matter-of-factly

M-hmm...

Matter of factly enough for you?

It goes without saying that someone else's test will not be sufficient for anyone else so I will not offer my own test as an example but FWIW, it's worked consistently for over 60 years.

You could say that my test was a self fulfilling prophesy or that my own expectations determined the outcome but that isn't how it happened. The answers I got were far far away from what I expected. And ultimately so much better too.

If something works, whether you call it faith or individual resonance matters not. It can be reasoned out whether it is coincidence or not.

If your faith leads you to the right answer 10 times in a row to something you could not have otherwise known, Reason will tell you it isn't coincidence.

If your faith leads you to the right answer 10 times in a row to something you could not have otherwise known, Reason will tell you it isn't coincidence.

You cannot have faith in something that exists only in the realm of your beliefs.

This is nonsensical and suggests you don't understand faith. You seem to be hellbent on drawing a distinction between belief and faith. If you could possibly be right, you haven't made your case.


No one wants to relegate the object of their belief to the realm of simple belief, and that's why they opt to call semantics into play for the purpose of increasing the reality of something that has yet to be proven real. So they attempt to upgrade their belief by calling it faith. But it's still a belief.

Have I not written, more than once, that there isn't much of a difference between faith and belief?

You, obviously, have an issue with some who would describe as faithful.

Can we ever discuss these subjects without a fixation on a relatively small number of people for whom the poster has disdain?


Faith is a belief in the structure or behavior of something whose existence is evident.

This is simply wrong. The existence of God is not objectively (truly objectively) evident.

For instance, you have faith that your wife will not betray you. And that faith is applicable because it has to do with the behavior of something that is tangible--your wife. She is not a belief; she is a reality.

More incoherent nonsense.

You acquired your belief in the god from a book. You borrowed another's belief, even to the extent that you believe that God is its name, and creating is its game, and that it is a male. Believers tend to ignore the fact that their beliefs are the result of having been influenced.

You have no idea from where I acquired my belief in God. It wasn't a book (and here you obviously mean the Bible).

You're making silly simplistic arguments. What would you have me call God, if not "God?"

As for whether or not God is a "male," of course God transcends human genders. I just can't be bothered with repeating "he/she/it" in all of my posts. More nonsense.

In what way do you believe that the god you believe in loves its creation?

This is a silly question. You seem to think that through your intellectual might you are drilling down on all my fallacies, but you are simply revealing the shallowness of your understanding.

I am a humble creator and I know creators far more talented than me...we all "love" our creations. Having said this I don't think for a moment that God's love is similar to the hubris of human creators.

Instead, the better analogy is mother's love. So, fine, let's assign God a female gender.

I'm trying hard not to insult you and perhaps I've failed, but your arguments are far too simplistic and biased.

Every time I read about a loving god, I am reminded of the killing fields in Cambodia, the Jewish holocaust, the Iraq debacle, and I say to myself, This kind of love I don't need.

edgarblythe wrote:

Every time I read about a loving god, I am reminded of the killing fields in Cambodia, the Jewish holocaust, the Iraq debacle, and I say to myself, This kind of love I don't need.

And this is because you have an infantile notion of what a "God" must be.

That's my take on a loving god. A god in general is simple anthropomorphism. Rooted in notions predating more sophisticated knowledge.

Are you a parent edgar?
That's irrelevant.

Can you explain what you experienced ten times in a row?

[belief in God is]Rooted in notions predating more sophisticated knowledge.